


There's No Rainbow Bridge Across The Generation Gap

by mattador



Category: Mythology - Norse
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007, recipient:Cinaed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-27
Updated: 2009-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 08:15:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattador/pseuds/mattador





	There's No Rainbow Bridge Across The Generation Gap

  


  
  
  
  
  


  
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## There's No Rainbow Bridge Across The Generation Gap

 

Fandom: [Mythology - Norse](http://yuletidetreasure.org/get_fandom_quicksearch.cgi?Fandom=Mythology%20-%20Norse)

 

Written for: Cinaed in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge

by [Mattador](http://yuletidetreasure.org/cgi-bin/contact.cgi?filename=45/theresno)

 

Loki exploded from the ground laughing, surfacing from between the churning slabs of concrete like a trout leaping in a stream. His hands were thrown upwards in the air, as though conducting the symphony of shattering glass and panicked screams, his naked body finally whole and unrestrained, his cock a hard, emphatic exclamation point. The earthquake rose to a crescendo as his ascent steadied, placing him neatly amidst the rubble and the rippling street, and at his darkly beatific smile, the juddering seizures of the earth slowed and stilled.

 

His smile wavered as he looked around. Everywhere, the buildings towered over him, shining edifices of steel and glass- unimaginable towers, considering they were in Midgard, in a city of men. He had known that his imprisonment was long, and the world would change- the language, the style of dress, the ways mortals tried to distinguish which of them was best and most fit to rule- they always changed. But this... he frowned, and strode purposefully down the vaulted black ridges of broken street, taking everything in, watching the people crawl out from the corners they'd hidden in when they believed the world was coming to pieces around them.

 

Which it would, of course, but not just yet. He altered course, ever so slightly, approaching the nearest man of station. What sort of social status the man held, Loki did not know, but that was unimportant- the confident way he held himself, the mingled disbelief and superiority plain in his eyes when he turned, startled, and saw a naked man striding towards him, they told him this was someone who thought he was important. Then, too, there was the care with which he kept his clothes- smoothing the rumples cowering in fear had made in beige trousers and coat, adjusting some decoration around his neck, a colored silk noose of some sort- maybe this man was of the grimmer sort of Odin's worshippers? No matter. Loki snapped his fingers, and suddenly the well-tailored suit was his, and the man was nude, hiding any feeble sign of his masculinity behind his hands.

 

Loki reached down to adjust his new tie. Hmmm. They were tricky, it seemed. Almost as an afterthought, he snapped his fingers again- the naked man's outraged cursing had begun to annoy him already. It was a nothing sort of trick, to focus on the smooth grey contour's of the man's brain and smooth out a few wrinkles- his speech, his sight, and his ability to hold an erection. A fitting punishment for insolence to a.... he paused, shook his head, and chuckled. He was counted among the Aesir no more, and his millennia of torment were ended. What did a mortal's rough tongue matter? Another thought, and he restored both vision and virility. The man should be permitted some way of entertaining himself, after all, in the time remaining before Ragnarok.

 

Which reminded him. He had a ship to catch. His dear daughter had been collecting the dishonored dead for all this time... Hel. He smiled at the thought of her, halfway between life and death, terrible beauty and hideous ruin, and turned his steps north, towards Niflheim.

 

***

 

"There's no boat," Hel said calmly, reclining on a white plastic chair, her face slathered with some manner of green foam and her eyes hidden behind two slices of unfamiliar vegetable. "I've renounced the patriarchal system of cyclical self-punishment and destruction, Father."

 

There was no language barrier, not for gods- the full clarity of every meaning behind every word was there, no matter the language or the dialect, spelled out in his mind as he heard it spoken. Loki blinked. "The boat is not yet prepared?" he ventured, testing the part of the sentence that he had understood.

 

"No," Hel said, drawing out the word. "There is no boat, there will be no boat, and in any case, the crew all have better things to do, now. I know that you've been gone a long time, but that's no reason to be obtuse."

 

"Obtuse? Daughter, you have been queen in Niflheim, overseeing the dead, while I have been entombed beneath the Earth, wracked with snake-venom burning my face- and I have spent that time planning for this moment, the glory and the revenge of striking down the gods who scorned me, and who cast you down. Am I obtuse for trusting you to do as you were meant to do?"

 

Hel sighed, and stood up, peeling the vegetable slices off her face. She turned her back to him, walking over to where one of the nameless dead stood, holding a bowl of warm water and a fluffy towel, and began wiping off her face.

 

"Yes," she said. "You've already seen that the world has changed, Father. Niflheim has changed with it. At the advice of my therapist, I took a long vacation in Scandinavia a few decades ago, to find out what it was that I missed so much and making me so unhappy, and when I came back I decided to modernize."

 

Loki knew, with a sudden hysterical certainty, that he hadn't really escaped his prison. He was still down there, acid fumes searing him constantly, even when Sigyn caught the poison itself, and this was some sort of fever-dream induced by inhaling too much of the rotten stuff. Or- no. This was Odin's work, that sly bastard, sending him visions to torment him.

 

He pinched himself, and grimaced.

 

"How, pray tell, do you modernize the World of Mist, home to the feeble and cowardly who did not manage to die in battle?"

 

"You make it a health spa," she said firmly, and dropped the towel into the basin. "Thank you, Viggo, you may go now." She patted the dead man on the arm as he turned to go. "Well, similar to a spa, at least. Everyone who's here died unsatisfied, Father- their lives wasted, their potential squandered. That's why they're dishonored, after all. Rather than having them suffer more for it, I've started a postlife education program so that they can learn, find a direction, and start working towards a state of self-actualization. Once they become whole, fully realized people, they work to help out the rest."

 

Loki's mouth hung open, and more than half her speech passed through his ears without being recognized in any way. "What happened to you?" he managed after a moment.

 

"Well, obviously before I worked out the program, I had to go through something simi-"

 

"_No_," he said, and gestured, still staring. "What happened to _you?_"

 

Hel smiled, a little self-consciously, and raised one hand up to touch her cheek. Where once her left half had been the blue-black of dead flesh, blood burst inside it and then frozen, now it was pale and creamy as her right- uneven in places, and blotchy, but the snarling rictus of her half-dead, swollen face had been smoothed, skin a little taut, muscles not lifting her smiling lips quite as high, but...

 

"Simple surgery, Father," she said, sounding fond but exasperated. "And regular appointments with a dermatologist. Didn't you hear me say the world has changed? Maybe you'd better go and talk with my brothers- you always did get on better with snakes and wolves. _They_ might be able to get through to you."

 

***

 

Loki stood on the ragged end of the promontory, balancing on the balls of his feet on the slippery black rock, and as the waves broke in front of him, stinging his eyes with salt, he spread his arms.

 

"Jormungandr!" he called, feeling somewhat relieved that his summons was still delivered in a voice like rolling thunder that curdled stormclouds into existence above the darkening sea.

 

Some things didn't change. That was good to know, just now.

 

"Jormungandr, my son, Strangler of the World, Fisherman's Dread, Serpent of the Deepest Sea, _Arise!_ I, your father, must speak with you."

 

The waves stirred, a dozen little whirlpools spinning, before the sea bulged before him, and the glimmer of scales- green, gold, and black- broke through the waves as Jormungandr reared his head. The arched coil of his neck rose, twenty feet above the water, his vast shadow falling across Loki's face, his eyes wide, red, and dancing with light.

 

"Hi, Dad," he said, sounding a little embarrassed. "Um. It's been awhile."

 

Loki's growing sense of triumph, of the majesty of this epic and long-awaited moment, hesitated, then retreated a little. He felt slightly betrayed.

 

"Jormungandr," he said. "I have crossed the world to meet you, walking all the way from Niflheim, to discuss the oncoming end of existence, and the place of our family in it. Would it kill you to treat the occasion with a little more gravitas?"

 

"Sorry," Jormungandr said, voice sounding just a little squeaky, and shrunk back a bit. "Um. Ahem." He shook his head, and spoke again, his voice a stentorian rumble shaking his way up his throat, turning the water around him to a froth of choppy waves that disturbed the steady progress of the incoming tide.

**"My Father. It is good that you have come, free at last from your incarceration. Speak, and tell me your will."**

 

Loki nodded, somewhat mollified. "Your sister has wavered in her determination, my son. The dead of Niflheim may not meet the einherjar in battle, if matters do not change, but the clash of mortals is of less concern than that of the gods. All too soon, we will charge with the giants of Muspellheim to meet them, and you will face Thor, as is your destiny, and slay him. I have come here to be certain that you are prepared- not weakened in your resolve by bards, healers, and soothsayers, like your sister."

 

Jormungandr looked puzzled, and a little taken aback.

 

"All right," Loki allowed. "By feminists, psychiatrists, and plastic surgeons, like your sister."

 

Jormungandr shifted slightly, uneasy. "No, father. I mean, **no, father. The dead pass to Niflheim, bringing strange ideas, but they do not descend to the depths of the sea."**

 

"Then you are ready to slay Thor?"

 

Jormungandr said nothing.

 

"Jormungandr?"

 

"**Father, I think that- oh, this is stupid.** Dad, I really don't want to make you angry, but ..."

 

"Too late," Loki said darkly, then waved his hand and dismissed the shadowy clouds and the windwracked waves. "Explain to me where, exactly, this reluctance springs from? You were ravenous for flesh before I was imprisoned, and Thor's above all other gods or men."

 

Jormungandr's coils moved in a shrug. "I've always been the biggest thing around. Everything was afraid of me, and it made me angry- I wasn't really ravenous. I just... couldn't get close to people any other way, besides eating them. They wouldn't let me."  
"I thought you said there had been no psychiatrists," Loki said accusingly.

 

"Hel helped me figure out a couple things- but that isn't what changed me, Dad! See, a while ago they started laying cables across the bottom of the sea, mostly for telecommunications, and at first all I did was bite them in half. But after a while I figured out how to just listen, instead, to hear people talking, and then... then it wasn't just phones any more. I found _internet_ cables. And I could talk to people without having to see them, so they wouldn't be afraid of me- I could be a supermodel, or Norman Mailer, and they wouldn't know the difference. Even when people did make me angry, I could vent on the message boards, or log onto a game and work off my aggression there- I really like Half-Life, the things you can do in multiplayer if you're creative are-"

 

Loki cleared his throat, warningly. "Fine," he said. "If you no longer feel you are an exile, that is... good. But that you have made friends is still no reason for you not to slay Thor, who..."

 

A sea serpent smiling sheepishly is an awkward sight.

 

"Thor's very enthusiastic about everything electronic- everything that has to do with electricity, really," Jormungandr said, taking in a deep breath and expelling one word after another with no pause for Loki to interrupt. "We actually started talking without knowing it a little over a year ago on a Nightwish fansite, and-"

 

***

 

"Bartender," Loki said, beckoning with three fingers and giving his voice the extra edge needed to carry through the... noise. He looked the man in the eye as he approached, and read out of it exactly what he needed. "Long Island Iced Tea. Large. Now." He glanced over his shoulder. "Make it two."

 

Loki gestured with his offhand at the Fenris-Wolf as he plumped down in next barstool over. "He'll need something to drink, too," he said, and the bartender blinked in surprise.

 

The Fenris Wolf. His deadliest, most dangerous son. Even disguised by the magics that bound him into a harmless, human shape, he still wore a wolf's open, lolling grin. His beard and hair were both mown down to stubble, black-inked tattoos ran coils of chain up and down his arms, and he was dressed in a most undignified manner, a white sleeveless shirt that seemed almost painted onto his skin, and pants that seemed with his every motion about to fall off.

 

"Ragnarok," The Fenris Wolf said, nodding, eyes gleaming. "'s about time. That punk bitch Tyr is going down, and then it's gonna burn. Oh, yeah, it's aaaaaaall gonna burn. Don't you worry none. I'm ready for it, Hell, I can't wait for it! I know you've spent a lot of time in stir, you might feel you're a little off your game, but you know it just toughened you up! Got you ready for the main event. End of the World. Bringin' down the house. No more bullshit, no more headgames, just, mmm! Those who live by the sword, baby, gnaamean?"

 

Loki sipped his drink, a long, reverent sip, and he listened.

 

***

 

The council of giants in Muspellheim met in the caldera of a dormant volcano, out of consideration from the frost giants, who looked nearly as uncomfortable as Loki. But then, none of them were wearing anything as confining as a finely tailored suit.

 

His fingers worried at the knot in his tie for a moment, and then he smiled and stepped forward, nodding to Surtr and the other fire giants, who regarded him with suspicion in their white-phosphorous eyes.

 

"Ragnarok is coming," Loki said, and smiled at the way the caldera fell silent as his voice carried across it. "There is no doubt of that. Mortal men in their foolishness will trigger its beginning- their own bombs will cloud the skies and bring on Fimbulvetr, the winter that ends the world. And then we will lay scourge to them, one orgy of slaughter the likes of which nothing can survive. All will be destroyed, my friends, all will fall before us. You can be sure of that. What then, however?"

 

He paused, waiting until they were sure it was not a rhetorical question. Surtr's wife Sinmara broke the silence first.

 

"What do you mean?"

 

"I mean, what then? What will you do, those of you who are lucky enough to survive, once the world is a lifeless wasteland, every bit of it nothing more than frozen cinders, Ginnungagap come again."

 

A frost giant smiled at him, a little condescendingly. "Is stupid question. Ragnarok is the End, da? Nothing more to do, once we destroy it all."

 

"Yes, comrade," Loki said warmly, smiling at him. It was always best if they said these things themselves. He paused, and made himself look lost and befuddled, as though the notion had just occurred to him. "No more howling winter breaking trees with its cold. No more conflagration hungrily eating its way across the flesh of the forest. For those who are left... nothing will be left. After all these years, all the wars, the glorious battles, the disasters we've caused, the joyful, brutal swathes we've cut... we'll be done. Ragnarok will be the most feastworthy battle in all of history... but there will be no feasts, and no more battles to look forward to."

 

"It's what we want!" one of them shouted angrily. But it wasn't the zealot's rage at heresy Loki heard- it was the sound of someone who is furious because they are uncertain.

 

"What else would you suggest?" Surtr asked, blustering and scornful. "No destruction? No bombs, no blizzards, we all just sit in our chairs like old women?"

 

"Of course not!" Loki said. From the cracked obsidian floor beside him, he lifted a slender silver briefcase and slapped it down on the tables rock before them. Within it lay several dozen slim potfolios, neatly laminated and every page framed in fire-resistant asbestos covers. "The key to this business, gentlemen, to any business, is sustainability! The world has grown quiet for centuries as you marshaled your forces, and we will not disappoint them! Now is the time to strike! But not all at once, not to have it over so soon, so unsatisfyingly, to leave us- as Surtr says- sitting in our chairs for all eternity. A measured, conservative wave of anarchy and catastrophe will allow us to freeze, to burn, to slaughter and ruin our way across the globe- and keep doing it, again and again, for all time!" He flipped open the portfolio and stabbed his finger at the atlas within. "We start here, with a volcanic eruption on a scale not seen this century- a wave of lava and ash that will scorch the island to glass and darken the skies, making for a winter that will stretch its fingers for almost six months, clawing nearly to the tropics. In the weather that results, we..."

 

He stopped listening to himself after a while, stopped watching the growing enthusiasm on their baffled faces at his itinerary for their campaign of sustainable Ragnarok. His children were wrong. It wasn't the world that had changed. Only the particulars of the game. And if he had anything to say about it, that was how it was going to stay, for a long time now... at least, until he got bored.

 

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